say, but what he is: that is eternally enough.

Of course, it does sometimes happen that we think we have made a
friend, and on closer acquaintance we find things in him that are
alien to our very being; but even so, such a friendship often
survives, if we have given our heart, or if affection has been
bestowed upon us--affection which we cannot doubt. Some of the
richest friendships of all are friendships between people whose
whole view of life is sharply contrasted; and then what blessed
energy can be employed in defending one's friend, in explaining him
to other people, in minimising faults, in emphasising virtues!
"While the thunder lasted," says the old Indian proverb, "two bad
men were friends." That means that a common danger will sometimes
draw even malevolent people together. But, for most of us, the only
essential thing to friendship is a kind of mutual trust and
confidence. It does not even shake our faith to know that our
friend may play other people false: we feel by a kind of secret
instinct that he will not play us false; and even if it be proved
incontestably that he has played us false, why, we believe that he
will not do so again, and we have all the pleasure of forgiveness.

Who shall explain the extraordinary instinct that tells us, perhaps
after a single meeting, that this or that particular person in some
mysterious way matters to us? The person in question may have no
attractive gifts of intellect or manner or personal appearance; but
there is some strange bond between us; we seem to have shared
experience together, somehow and somewhere; he is interesting,
whether he speaks or is silent, whether he agrees or disagrees. We
feel that in some secret region he is congenial. Est mihi nescio
quid quod me tibi temperat astrum, says the old Latin poet--"There